Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

15 Cal. 501

Smith v. Richmond

California Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1860

California Supreme Court · decided 1860-07-01

Complaint, not verified, averred substantially as set forth in first syllabus. Answer, not verified, denied all the allegations of the complaint, and set up discharge in insolvency in bar. On the trial, plaintiff proved up the note mentioned in the complaint, introduced it in evidence, and rested.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently July 1884

4 state decisions

20186018701880decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Baldwin, J. delivered the opinion of the Court

¶1Field, C. J. concurring.

¶2The complaint in this case does not distinctly, if at all, count on two causes of action. The whole matter of the complaint seems to be blended in one statement. If the complaint was intended to set up two causes of action, this intent was not distinctly manifested by the form of the complaint, as it should have been.

¶3It is true, the complaint does not aver that the defendant was discharged in bankruptcy; it says he claimed to be, but in the next sentence it avers that after his discharge he promised, etc.; and we are inclined to think that the proper construction is that the gravamen of the action was designed to be the promise—the previous indebtedness being averred as matter of inducement, or as indicating the extent and character of the engagement.

¶4The defendant might very well have been taken by surprise under these circumstances, and supposed it not necessary to introduce proof of his discharge.

¶5Under these circumstances, we cannot revise the discretion of the Court below in granting a new trial, there being no palpable abuse of it.

¶6Order affirmed.

/15/cal/501 · .json · Public domain